In the midst of arguably the most heated election cycle in decades, Vice News chose this week to offer a puff piece on the Democratic nominee for Senate in Utah. Misty Snow is challenging incumbent Republican Mike Lee in what can only generously be called a steep uphill battle. Overwhelmingly down in the polls, Snow, a grocery store clerk, has just over $8,000 in campaign money and is receiving no help from the national Democratic Party. The latest poll puts Snow at 22 percent voter support, to Lee’s 61 percent.
So why did Vice choose to feature Snow? Snow is the first transgendered Senate candidate ever nominated by a major party. The segment on Snow was more of an in-kind donation or campaign ad than anything remotely approaching news. The interviewer did not challenge the candidate, who lacks any qualifications generally associated with being a senator, on any issue or question. For all the recent uproar about the news media’s responsibility to fully vet candidates (ones named Donald Trump, anyway) Vice News decided in this case to make an exception.
This Wasn’t News, But PR
The cringe-worthy and condescending coverage clearly had nothing to do with the Senate or even politics. Rather, the segment was a further attempt to cement the ideology of transgenderism. As readers of these pages know, for many, perhaps even most Americans, a man’s ability to transition into being a woman is far from settled. No matter how many laws are passed to punish people for saying so, large swaths of Americans adhere to the biological definition of gender.
One quote from Snow was telling. When asked about what motivated the campaign, the Democratic nominee said, “I just didn’t like the other Democratic candidate. He said he was conservative and pro-life. I didn’t just find that unacceptable but offensive.” Had this actually been a news story, that statement would have been challenged and amplified. Perhaps mirroring Hillary Clinton’s language of “deplorables,” the Democrat said that being conservative and pro-life is offensive. This candidate is literally offended by millions and millions of American citizens.
But the interviewer just sat there nodding like a bobblehead doll. The irony of course, is that Snow is offended by people’s beliefs and has no problem announcing that on national television. But those of us who even challenge, must less take offense at, the belief that people can change their gender are thought to be operating outside the boundaries of acceptable discourse.
If a Woman Is a Woman, Why Is This ‘Historic’?
If Snow’s candidacy isn’t newsworthy on its merits, then Vice News must see this as a trailblazing moment. But exactly what trail is being blazed here? There are already women in the Senate. There have been for some time. The very fact that Snow is being celebrated as the first transgendered woman to run for Senate for a major party betrays the definitional dysfunction that underlies transgenderism in general.
How often are we beaten about the head with the message that “Transgender women are women, period”? If that is so, there is nothing particularly special about a woman running for Senate. The very use of the word transgendered before the word woman shows that Snow is not being described as a woman, but as a special kind of woman recently invented in our society. We cannot simultaneously hold that there is no difference between a trans woman and a woman while celebrating that precise distinction.
We are quickly seeing the demands and definitions of the trans movement change. It is no longer enough for trans people to simply be accepted as the gender of their choice. They must be given a special status within that gender. For the purposes of bathrooms and locker rooms, there is no difference between a trans woman and a woman; but for purposes of political and cultural propaganda, Vice News put that very distinction front and center.
For those of us who oppose the idea that gender is a choice, segments like what Vice News ran on Snow make it clear that our beliefs have become, to quote Snow, not just unacceptable but offensive. So be it. We do not consent to this belief system posing as science that undermines the ancient and scientific foundations of gender. We will not allow progressive culture to force us into its doublespeak.
The good news is that the trans movement and its allies exist under the false belief that the issue has been decided. But millions of Americans, be they deplorable and offensive or not, will continue to resist the attempt by men to appropriate the female gender.
